Cash Mob, What’s a Cash Mob?

Albany Uncovered is organizing and promoting a new trend that is sweeping the country in these difficult times for small business owners

Look around Albany and Leesburg and you will find small businesses suffering on almost every block. Some of these retail stores and restaurants have served your family faithfully for many years but these economic times and the ever encroaching ‘big box’ stores have made lives tough for most all of them.

Albany Uncovered believes in spending locally because it keeps our hard earned dollars here in our local area. When you spend a dollar at a big box store or at a national chain restaurant most of that dollar does not go back into the local economy. A small bit of it does when they give their employees their minimum wage paychecks, but the rest of your money that you worked so hard to earn is sent out of state usually, to make a corporation and it’s stockholders richer.

When you spend a dollar with a local merchant, it helps many more local people. Your purchase may pay for a new baseball glove for a little boy who plays on the same team as your son. It might pay for a visit to the dentist, or maybe it will just help that merchant pay the local person who keeps their books or handles their payroll. According to ‘The New Economic Foundation’ every dollar spent locally has the effect of immediately putting back TWO DOLLARS into the local economy. A dollar spent with a chain store doesnt immediatly put ANY money back in the local economy. It’s like putting a small band-aid on a large bleeding wound, all that money spent is sent out of state and then only a tiny portion flows back.

Around the country, grass roots efforts are popping up in small towns and cities to help these struggling merchants. A date and time is set and people are urged to attend the ‘CASH MOB’ event with $20.00 to spend at the merchant. This provides a much needed cash infusion to the business that urgently need it.

Following in this effort, Albany Uncovered will be organizing a monthly ‘Cash Mob’ for local businesses. These will be much more than just ‘come spend money’. I hope to organize local musicians to provide acoustic entertainment, activities for children who come with parents, and light appetizers provided by local restaurants. I hope each and every person will help me spread the word on this. These cash mobs are very much social networking movements and we will need each and every person out there to spread the word on Facebook and Twitter to make this happen.

On Saturday, July 14th at 1pm all participants will meet in the Winn Dixie parking lot on North Slappy. At 1:15 I will announce the business that we are going to mob and we will all drive to that location together to descend upon the business in one huge mob.


Please ‘like’ and comment on this article to help spread the word. Local Business is the lifeblood of our economy.